Tag Archives: video

The Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival winds down to a close at the end of the weekend. Hopefully, visitors, at the very least, took in some of the free lunch concerts that have been going on at various locations around town. The Festival started in 1980, and has been a boost to summers in Fairbanks ever since.

I saw the Lowboy Cello Band on Alaska Live Wednesday, which prompted this post. One doesn’t often think of Fairbanks as being a cello hotbed, but we seem to be holding our own. The band consists of four members of the Alaska Cello Intensive. The above video is the ACI doing a beautiful, yet more traditional piece. I will follow that up with a video of ACI getting a little loose and funky.

Valley Spruce by Sara Tabbert

The original piece above, by artist Sara Tabbert, is hand carved and painted on wood. The piece will be auctioned off today at 7:30pm at the Westmark downtown, during the FSAF Orchestra Pops Concert.

PBS is airing an incredible documentary through their American Masters series called Ted Williams: “The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived”, and it is extremely well done.

Ted Williams in 1947

Ted Williams was a fascinating, yet complicated individual. Widely accepted as the greatest hitter that baseball has ever seen, Williams had a swing that was pure artistry. He also had a temper that both riled and endeared fans and sports writers alike.
He was the last man to hit over .400 during a MLB season, which Williams did in 1941. He also refused to tip his cap when on the field, even after hitting a home run. His final at bat at Fenway Park was a home run, yet his cap never left his head. In private, Williams raised millions of dollars for treatment and research for children with cancer.

Ted Williams in Korea

His baseball career was interrupted twice by war. Williams spent three years in The U.S. Navy in WWII, and another year of service in Korea in 1953. He flew 39 ground attack combat missions as a Marine pilot over Korea. Many, as John Glenn’s wingman.

The American Masters documentary pulls no punches as it delves into “The Kid’s” life. Williams was a complicated man, but as the film states, “Williams was real. Ted lived his life with his emotions on his sleeve”. The documentary is well worth the time, even if you have little interest in baseball.

An era will officially come to an end in Alaska, as the final two Blockbuster Video stores will close by the end of August.

Alaska is currently home to two of the final three Blockbusters in the United States, with a store in both Anchorage and Fairbanks. The two stores have the same owner, and are still making a profit, but with the profits in continual decline and the leases up at both locations, ownership has decided to close down.

Blockbuster Video, Fairbanks, Alaska

In 2013, the state still had 13 Blockbuster locations, but that has dwindled to the final two holdouts over the last five years.

Both locations will open at noon on Tuesday with an inventory sale that will last through the month of August.

With the closing of the two Alaska stores, the last Blockbuster in the U.S. is in Bend, Oregon.

The Katmai Bear Cam, which overlooks Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park & Preserve, is back up and running.
Thanks to the folks at the NPS and explore.org for the cam. Just prior to posting, I took a quick view, and there were no bears to be seen yet. Hopefully, there will actually be salmon down there for the bears.

Legendary Chicago bluesman, Eddy Clearwater died today. He was 83. Born Edward Harrington in Macon, Mississippi, Eddy moved to Chicago in 1950, taking on the nickname “Guitar Eddy”. His agent suggested Clear Water, playing off of bluesman Muddy Waters. Eventually that morphed into Eddy Clearwater.

Clearwater perfected his own style of Blues, which he called “rock-a-blues”, a mixture of Blues, rock, rockabilly, country and gospel. His music career extended over six decades, and he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2016.

I first saw Eddy Clearwater live at a club in Des Moines called “Blues on Grand”. I tell you, it was one hell of a show. Of all the Blues acts I saw in Des Moines, I think Clearwater was my favorite. Eddy was such a showman, and I was mesmerized by his guitar play. Clearwater was self taught, and he played the guitar left-handed and upside down. My buddy who was at Blues on Grand with me said, “Watching him play is giving me a headache!” When Clearwater was on stage, he grabbed your attention, and didn’t let you go until he was done with you.

We sat close to the stage, although at BoG, no one sat very far from it. Just before a break, Clearwater called my buddy and I out from the stage. During the intermission, he came over to us and talked to us like we were old friends. Of course, he gave each of us a guitar pick. To this day, I still have mine; it’s fastened to the dash of my old Land Rover.

Long before WWII and the Japanese invasion of the two islands in the Aleutian Chain, Attu Island was part of the earliest Federally protected wildlife areas.

This year is the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Attu, and the National Park Service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service are both commemorating the battle with several discussions, gatherings and art displays. Unfortunately, most are being held in Anchorage, but the big city, that’s a little closer to Alaska, has its merits too.